Random Plays

Hey!

I bet you’re wondering why it’s been so long since my last posts. Well you can wonder no longer! Lisa (the beautiful woman featured below) and I have finally moved out to glorious Vancouver and are currently taking root. Things have been extremely hectic lately as we prepared for the move and finally (oh so finally) went through with it. We have been here since the 22nd and the weather has been gorgeous; 20’s and not a drop of rain for nearly a week. Just finished up the resume and I am about to do my rounds with the companies I have been dying to talk to!

More updates to come! I still plan to give a proper review of VFS Game Design Expo 08, GDC San Fran 08, and my long lost interview with Ron Gilbert man of mystery! Also I’ll let you all know what becomes of me and my quest to work at a studio here.

Ta ta!

Still trying to recover from GDC and get all my ducks in a row.

Expect the balance of posts from the past 2 months tomorrow night! It’s going to be crazy…

This game was great!

In my quest to review games and materialize an opinion (for better or worse) on games that are influential, and why, I have finally hit a game that is overall really well made. Lego Star Wars (the classics) is on the whole an engaging and interactive game that has all the trendy things you come to expect nowadays; strictly consumerist replay value in the form of cosmetic upgrades to lifeless characters we pilot, and stat-based completion screens bean-counting the 1 purple lego piece you missed cause you cant control the camera angle (well). Ok ok I realize that is pretty ranty- but the rest of the game kicks ass. The controls are really easy to use and intuitive, the graphics are very stylized and suit the game.

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All things are squared away up here in the frozen north as I count down the final hours to the flight(s). Simply just cannot wait to get there!

I know I missed the last few days of posting but I have been running around preparing for GDC. In short - it snowed a lot up here, and I have been reading a lot. Ideas are flowing again however and I feel that a breakthrough is imminent! By the way, they finally announced a release date for spore (which is my birthday!) and I am very very excited to say the very least. There is even a draft I have been working on titled “Will Wright - Man of Legend” which I will have to post soon.

Here is a picture of what it was like driving my grandmother to the hospital after she slipped on the ice; don’t worry she is ok. Compared to surviving cancer she scoffs at a broken arm! GOOOO JULIA!

SEE YOU THIS WEEKEND AFTER GDC!!!!!!

Hey guys! I know that you loooove reading about me traveling and having fun so I thought I would share my GDC schedule with everyone!
Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com)

Tuesday!
- arrive in San Fran around noon
- take in a bit of the city then head back to the Westin for the IGDA party (www.igda.com)
- hopefully get a good night sleep and get ready for the next 3 days of expo

Wednesday!
- 9 am “Dr. Strangeflow or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pipeline”
- expo and booth crawl the rest of the day, meeting people, etc

Thursday!
- more expo and booth crawl with smaller events going on
- 5:30 pm “Networking 201: Navigating Corporate Culture”

Friday!
- 10:30 am “From Grunt to God to Startup: Career Lessons From the Edge of Game Development by David Jaffe”
- Noon “A Leap of Faith: When to Leave your Job and go Independent”
- 2:30 pm “All About Art”
- 4 pm “PORTAL Post-Mortem: Integrating Writing and Desig”
- make my flight home late and probably very tired

Saturday!
- 3pm finally get home……

It is going to be a whirlwind experience for sure. Stay tuned for more coverage of the GDC and more information on the sessions I will be attending!

-Dave

Now, I was going to really lay into these guys about their presentation on day 1 - but it is also because of this post that I have been putting off my entire review of the weekend. I don’t really know why I feel so up in arms against them, because I’m not. I just got this really weird vibe from Arnab. I can’t quite place it, but it’s very unsettling.

For about 6 years now I have been working in the IT field and my gut tells me that either he was hiding something, or it was his first time presenting in front of any size of crowd and he was just really nervous - sending out all the wrong kind of signals. Who knows! Giving them the benefit of the doubt Crystal Dynamics have some neat titles under their belt in the last 15 years and were on site to talk about 2 things; “Shared Design” and on the second day which I will cover here also “Who’s your game for?”.

Inspiring young men everywhere!

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Talk about keeping busy with nothing.

As a precursor to the gibberish that may follow please bear in mind that I am on the tail end of a cold that has done well to destroy my physical state. Regardless, it has taken me a while to fully digest what went down in Vancouver and my brain is finally ready to discuss it! Yay! I can see you are all excited.

Day 1 - Keynote - Jay Weinland and CJ Cowan

I realized something very soon after Jay started talking about meticulous audio design in Halo 3; I am not a sound engineer and never will be.

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I’m back from my whirlwind vacation to the left coast and what a journey indeed! Multiple sources told me how beautiful it was, but it’s hard to properly pass the knowledge along even when you’re staring right at it. The 3000 pictures I took still don’t seem to do it any justice.

Moving on! Structure…

The VFS GDE (Vancouver Film School)( Game Design Expo) was incredible! These guys really know what they are doing and it shows in spades. The 2 day event was well run, organized, clean, smooth; everything you could hope for if you’re new to the industry. Hat’s off to Sarah, Tom, and David who ran the event on behalf of the school and Tom and David who head up the Game Design Program. There isn’t any kind of operation in Toronto that comes close to achieving what is happening out there - full integration of industry professionals with students working hand in hand at some points during their courses. Game Design at VFS is a 1 year program (so its short) but nearly all of the students in the program are walking out with jobs (which is quality), what more can you ask for? Oh yeah, a beautiful city to study in and be inspired…

Just to give some sort of structure now to my recap of the events below are a number of things I would really like to cover in the following few days;

• Bungie / Halo 3 - Sound and Cinematic Design Keynote
• My thoughts on Crystal Dynamics and Tomb Raider / thoughts on licensing titles / shared design
• Original IP - Kelly Zmak (great points here)
• Console Wars - Don Daglow (the man, the legend)
• EA’s Fusion Corp (loving this new direction)
• The Panel! Where we all stand
• Hothead Games - Rainslick Post Mortem
• Talking with Ron Gilbert in the hallway :)
• Bioware / ME / Pillars of design
• More thoughts on Crystal Dynamics / a good question from the crowd / and knowing your audience
• “The Activision Way” - a scary man talks about his scary plan :)
• In general my thoughts and more about Vancity

So at some point as it comes to me and as I can decipher this chicken scratch I’ll be posting about the following.

Hope you guys are as excited as I am!
-Dave

L - as in local

A - as in area

N - as in network

That is correct! LAN gaming. What was a phenomenon that shared (somewhat) the other major phenomenon of the early post Y2K era in computing (Internet Cafés) is still a strong tradition of fun and comradmanship between me and my FPS buddies. Back in October we were kicking off the season opener of the Abattoir which precludes many a frag filled glorious times spent in the basement of my good friend Craig Milton, his beautiful wife Mary Jane and their darling children. Every couple month’s they swing open the doors for the various hodgepodge of gamers in the southern Ontario region that continue to rejoice in LAN gaming. This weekend I will be in attendance as usual huck’n rockets across the map at BTM 58 “Elimination Edition” where, if last BTM was any indication, there will be a LOT of TF2 going down. The game itself has become a staple of the community in just one showing as the release of Orange Box came about not a few weeks before the last event. The game itself is stellar. Read more »

Update!

Just secured my spot at the VFS Game Design Expo (January 18th-20th, Vancouver) and my plane tickets! I am so ridiculously excited for this. You can check out their website at www.gamedesignexpo.com , however, the event is now sold out. Gold sponsor G4 TechTV and silver sponsor EA will be there in full force I’m sure as last year’s inaugural event blew the doors off the place (indirect quote). There are obviously a number of things I am looking forward to such as the Keynote featuring Jay Weinland and CJ Cowan which were team leads on Halo 3. Essentially it’s a 2 day event with panels and seminars on both days, and general meet and greets for all the local design houses in BC and we aspiring game designers and other industry professionals (artists, programmers, etc). I’m also really excited to hear the “Penny Arcades Adventures Post Mortem” where Vlad Ceraldi, Joel DeYoung and Ron Gilbert talk about the blockbuster that wasn’t and why.

I plan to background and investigate a lot of the personalities and projects that will be in attendance since I am still fairly new to the industry (especially the left coast scene) and offer my thoughts before getting the horse mouth’s version. It will be interesting to see if things change or stay the same, and if they do change- how and for what reasons. And who knows, if this conference is a success for my purposes, maybe I will head to the San Fransisco conference later in the year.

More on this later…